From my uk experience of flying Helis and with friends who are plank fliers that's a mighty strange way of doing training -in the uk you can go flying with an instructor without any ground school and do the ground school as you get close to going solo-in the Uk there are some shocking instructors who see the student as a cow to milk money from -but we have some fabulous characters who teach people to fly and do a superb job at it and will help the weaker student to achieve their personal aims -